Inside Boot Camp

In one of the biggest announcements coming out of Apple in its 30 year history, Apple has released a public beta of Boot Camp, a software that allows you to install and run Windows XP on your Mac. It provides a GUI for the entire process and will be integrated into the next major release of OS X, Leopard.

Boot Camp requires an Intel Mac with OS X Tiger with 10 GB of free space and a Windows XP installation CD with service pack 2. It will not work with the Media Center edition, a multi-disk or an upgrade version. Recently, the Windows XP was successfully booted on Intel Macs in a much publicized contest. Part of the problem that was expected in this process was that Apple uses a new standard called EFI to handle booting, which is not supported by Windows XP. According to Apple, though:

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980’s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

The installation process (pdf) provides a graphical interface to partition the hard drive with a simple draggable slider to allocate space for the Windows install. For partitions smaller than 32 GB, Boot Camp supports NTFS and FAT. Mac OS Tiger can read from and write to a FAT drive but only read from NTFS. According to Apple, the only tricky part in the entire process is the manual selection of the C: drive; an incorrect selection could result in it overwriting your OS X files. As part of the Boot Camp process, it will burn a CD with Windows drivers for graphics, networking, audio, AirPort wireless, Bluetooth, and a few other features so that, in Apple’s words, you don’t have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them. Once installed, you can choose which operating system to boot into by holding down the option key while the computer boots up until the disk icon appears. You may also go to your System Preferences to set which operating system you would like to boot by default.

The Macintosh community has been buzzing with rumors that the Leopard would include virtualization software- that is, software that would allow multiple operating systems to be running concurrently so that a user may switch between them without rebooting. Already there is speculation that the introduction of Boot Camp strengthens that rumor and true virtualization will be supported in the next major release of OS X.

Boot Camp is an 83 MB download and is still in beta. At this point, Apple does not provide technical support for this process other than on its web site. Back up all your important information and make sure you have the latest firmware upgrades before you proceed. The Apple Remote Control (IR), Apple Wireless (Bluetooth) keyboard or mouse, Apple USB Modem, MacBook Pro’s sudden motion sensor, MacBook Pro’s ambient light sensor, and built-in iSight camera will not work in Windows, but everything else should. If you use the iTunes music store, the Windows part of your machine will have to be authorized separately from the Macintosh part.

Also, as Apple reminds us in its Word to the Wise:

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

We could not have said it better ourselves. If you find yourself in a situation where you do not really want Windows on your Macintosh any more, Apple’s Boot Camp provides a simple two click process to rectify the situation and regain that part of your hard drive.